Organizations
OP1 is a massive bureaucratic monstrosity, where billions of investment and over a million employees are allocated to projects across Amazon. And this is a bit of what it feels like to be buried in the organizational structure.
Organizations
In organizations, you will continually re-litigate decisions and agreements if you don't carefully document them.
Organizations
We act with good intentions. But those actions often lead to an equal and opposite side effect. Are you thinking about what those might be?
Organizations
Team culture impacts productivity, retention, and happiness. This can be a positive or negative influence, depending on how you create your team's culture.
Organizations
Managers at growing companies are incentivized to do one thing more than anything else. Grow their teams. Is it mysterious that most tech companies seem to have over hired?
Organizations
Dealing with negative politics doesn't mean making your enemies wail in terror.
Organizations
We tend to throw up our hands and assume that big companies mean big politics. It doesn't have to be that way.
Organizations
How a manager at a big tech company (not necessarily Amazon), can succeed in playing the political game. Not entirely tongue in cheek.
Organizations
Cognitive diversity (vs. protected class diversity) is about finding people who think differently. How can we encourage different thinkers in our organizations?
Organizations
The working backwards process is the key mechanism Amazon uses to ensure that the right projects are funded. This same process should be used by engineering teams for their work.
Organizations
Slowing down deployments to add QA is viewed as trading off improved quality for slower speed. I'm going to convince you that it also lowers quality.
Organizations
Long-term vs one-time cost of product engineering is a core reason why companies grind to a halt over time.